The ongoing crackdown in China on porn and other illicit material has moved on from the Internet to content meant for mobile phones. So far, 1,250 web sites have been shut down and 41 people have been arrested as part of the initial crackdown.

The crackdown was unveiled by the Chinese government earlier this month, and will last until the beginning of February. The first phase of crackdowns focused only on the major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo.

It is being run by the Ministry of Public Security, the State Council Information Office, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

After Microsoft faced defeat in the courts of the European Union over Windows Media Player, they are being summoned back. This time they are being charged with unlawful competition for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.

The European Commission believes that, by including Internet Explorer, Microsoft has unfairly eliminated its competition. Microsoft has stated that it is reviewing the charges.

Another Malicious program, known as Conficker, Downadup, or Kido which manifested last October, works though attacking low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs unless the latest protection updates are used, infections are “skyrocketing”.

According to Anti-virus firm F-Secure it has infected 8.9m machines and the problem is escalating. Experts advised the best security is Microsoft’s MS08-067 patch. The worm creates a HTTP server & changes the System Restore point.

“Right now, we’re seeing hundreds of thousands of unique IP addresses connecting to the domains we’ve registered,” F-Secure’s Toni Kovunen said in a statement. They have not as yet been able to identify who produced the file.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the Internet has surpassed traditional newspapers in the United States in terms of people who use them as a source of information.

This year, 40 per cent of those surveyed said they get their news from the Internet, which is up from 16 per cent in September last year. 70 per cent of people surveyed still use the TV as the main source of news.

The patent application was submitted back in 2001 but approval wasn’t granted until early this year. Cygnus Systems claims that the ability to preview documents without opening them violates this patent.

Products which allegedly violate the patent include Safari, iPhone, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8, OSX, and Vista. The company is asking the court for “reasonable royalties” and is investigating other potentially infringing products.